AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Introduction
This is a complete pack to help students prepare for the synoptic paper. It models
one of the formats used in previous examinations. It consists of:
•
a pre-release pack based on an extract of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and
three pieces of secondary material
•
a question paper involving the comparison of two short poems about London
with the Mrs Dalloway extract
•
a series of additional tasks designed for students to work on in class to
develop their critical thinking about secondary sources.
Due to copyright issues, teachers will need to access some of the items in the pack
separately, but links are provided to sources of these.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Pre-release material
ƒ
You are permitted to make brief annotations on the pre-release
material. Such annotation should amount to no more than cross
references and/or the glossing of individual words or phrases.
Highlighting and underlining are permitted.
ƒ
You are not permitted to bring any additional written material with
you into the examination.
ƒ
Your teacher is not permitted to discuss the pre-release material with
you before the examination.
You must bring this material with you to the examination.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Item 1
The opening of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, from “Mrs Dalloway said she would
buy the flowers herself” to “She stood for a moment, watching the omnibuses in
Piccadilly”.
Full e-text available for free download at
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/.
Item 2
The entries from A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf for the dates 30 August 1923,
19 June 1923 and 15 October 1923. These are available at
http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/TheHours/thehours-4.pdf
The title of Mrs Dalloway was originally ‘The Hours’.
Item 3
Some notes about Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway by Michael Cunningham. This
document was available on the internet when the film version of his novel The Hours
was being promoted. It is no longer to be found. This is a slightly edited version.
When Woolf wrote MRS. DALLOWAY, she was living with her husband Leonard in the
suburbs of London. She was prone to unpredictable fits of the blackest imaginable
depression, at a time when the standard treatment was the pulling of teeth.
About all anyone could tell about her depressions was that excitement seemed to bring them
on. She and Leonard agreed that a suburb was appropriately devoid of excitement. By the
time she wrote MRS.DALLOWAY, they had lived in Richmond for almost eight years, and she
was beginning to believe that death from madness brought on by over-stimulation was
preferable to death from boredom. She was determined to move back to London, even if it
meant risking losing her mind.
Leonard feared for her health, her sanity, her life. Eventually, however, they returned to the
city. Virginia did, in fact, suffer more frequent and severe bouts of depression in London, but
she also entered her most productive period.
One of her depressions descended on her as the world prepared to fight World War II, and
the sense of everything falling apart was too much for her. While she and Leonard were at
their country house, she drowned herself.
She insisted on going into London, into what she considered the heart of life, knowing what it
would probably do to her. It fed her art, it made her as intensely happy as it did anything else.
She ultimately chose death, but she first chose life, and was willing to suffer the
consequences.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Item 4
Read ‘Some Attributes of Modernist Literature’ by Professor John Lye, fully and
freely available from
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/modernism.html).
(We are unable to reproduce the full article for reasons of copyright.)
Pay particular attention to the following headings. You may wish to make notes in
the box below.
Perspectivism
Impressionism
A re-structuring of literature and the experience of reality it re-presents
The (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality
The use of interior or symbolic landscape
Time is moved into the interior as well
The appearance of various typical themes
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Exam material
1.
Read the two previously unseen poems, ‘London’ and ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’.
Compare the ways in which the two poets in their poems, and the novelist
Virginia Woolf in the given extract from her novel Mrs Dalloway, present
London.
2. Look again at item 2 in the pre-release material. To what extent would you agree
with the critical assessments Virginia Woolf makes of her novel?
3. Michael Cunningham looks at some biographical issues related to the writing of
Mrs Dalloway. Professor John Lye presents some of the significant features of
modernist literature. To what extent do you find these two extracts useful when
you are reading the text?
4. Comment on some other contexts and/or approaches to reading novels which
help you to find meanings in them.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
‘Upon Westminster Bridge’ was written by William Wordsworth. He was born in 1770
and the collection from which this poem was taken was published in 1807. A copy of the
poem can be accessed here http://www.bartleby.com/101/520.html.
Upon Westminster Bridge
Sept. 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
‘London’ was written by William Blake. He was born in 1757 and the collection from
which this poem is taken was published in 1794. A copy of this poem can be accessed
here: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/184.html.
London
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appals;
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Additional critical thinking tasks
Task 1
Read Item 3, ‘Some notes about Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway’ by Michael
Cunningham.
Below is a 100 word summary of the key arguments in this text. Sort them out into
the correct logical order – this is not necessarily the order in which the points appear
in the original text. Note this order in the boxes below, e.g. 1=C.
A
London was exciting.
B
But she was also enormously creative in this period of her life.
C
But her art was the greater for the risks she was prepared to take.
D
So for the sake of her health, she and her husband moved to the suburbs.
E
So she persuaded her husband that they should move back to central London.
F
She did kill herself eventually.
G
Virginia Woolf suffered from severe depression at a time when this was not
well understood.
H
Consequently, she suffered more frequent and severe bouts of depression.
I
However, she was bored to death there.
J
This was brought on by excitement.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Now consider how Cunningham’s argument informs your reading of the extract from
Mrs Dalloway. Consider its relationship both to the ideas raised about the
individual, society, and London, and to Virginia Woolf’s choices of literary technique.
Make detailed notes of your ideas.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Task 2
Read Item 4, ‘Some Attributes of Modernist Literature’ by Professor John Lye.
Consider what evidence there is in the extract from Mrs Dalloway to support each of
the attributes identified in this item. Make notes in the table, expanding the rows as
required.
Perspectivism
The locating of meaning from the
viewpoint of the individual.
The use of narrators located
within the action, experiencing it
from a personal, particular
perspective.
The use of many voices, contrasts
and contestations of perspective.
Impressionism
Emphasis on the process of
perception and knowing.
The use of devices to present more
closely the texture or process or
structure of knowing and
perceiving.
Re-structuring of literature and the experience of reality it represents
Experience presented as layered,
allusive and discontinuous, not
cause and effect, sequential,
developmental.
The use of fragmentation and
juxtaposition, motif, symbol,
allusion.
The (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality
Including the ‘flow’ of experience,
through devices such as stream of
consciousness.
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Unit 6 Exploring Texts
The use of interior or symbolic landscape
The world is moved ‘inside’,
structured symbolically or
metaphorically.
Time is moved into the interior as well
Time becomes psychological time or
symbolic time, not the ‘historical’ or
railway time of realism.
Time moves backwards and forwards,
with events of different times
juxtaposed.
The appearance of various typical themes
E.g. question of the reality of
experience itself; the search for a
ground of meaning in a world without
God; the critique of the traditional
values of the culture; the loss of
meaning and hope in the modern
world and an exploration of how this
loss may be faced.
Now consider how Professor Lye’s analysis informs your reading of the extract
from Mrs Dalloway. Consider its relationship both to the ideas raised about
the individual, society, and London, and to Virginia Woolf’s choices of literary
technique. Make detailed notes of your ideas.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Task 3
Re-read items 3 & 4 and your notes produced in response to them. Then
consider the following question:
To what extent do you find these two extracts useful when you are reading
the text?
Note your points in the table below, making sure you comment both on what
you found useful/unhelpful and why. Use the first row to evaluate Item 3,
and the second row to evaluate Item 4.
Very useful
Quite useful
Quite unhelpful Very unhelpful
Now write a paragraph or two summarising your answer to the question.
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AQA B ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit 6 Exploring Texts
Task 4
Consider the final question: what other contexts and/or approaches to reading
novels have helped you to develop your understanding of meanings?
Note your points in the table below. You do not have to cover all of the
contexts – just choose those which you have used in your reading of novels.
You can draw on novels you have read for GCSE, AS, A2, and in your own
private reading where you have found contextual material helpful.
Type of context or
approach to reading
novels
How it helped the
Novels you have read
development of your
where this context or
understanding of
approach helped
meanings
The context of period or
era, including social,
historical, political and
cultural processes.
The context of the
writer’s biography
and/or milieu.
The context of the work
in terms of other works
of literature, including
works by the same
author.
The different contexts
for a work established
by its critical reception
over time.
The context of a passage
in terms of the work
from which it is taken, a
part-to-whole context.
The literary context,
including issues of genre
and period-specific
styles.
The language context,
including relevant and
significant stylistic
developments.
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